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Freedom Through a Fight Club (Kollender)
Introduction Intrepretive Disputes Part of the ''Fight Club'' experience is that you never know what is going to happen next. You are constantly picking up on new themes, problems, and ideas that the characters bring up. The entire movie keeps you guessing, all the way to the very end. In a [http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fight_club/comments/?reviewid=1652900 Rotten Tomatoes] review of the movie, critic Joe Lozito (cite) claims that the ending is a “hypocritical cop out”. He goes on to say, “I don't mind a film with a surprise ending but, rather than enhancing the film, the climactic revelation in "Fight Club" cancels out everything previously seen.” This well qualified critic who has years of experience in the movie business writes a seemingly nice review about the movie until he tears apart the ending to the movie. The debate that ensues from his review is obviously all personal preference because there is no “right or wrong” ending, but from the looks of Joe’s preference of movies (Star Wars and It’s a Wonderful Life) he seems to enjoy the happy, fairytale endings. ''Fight Club'' fanatics immediately came to the movies defense by arguing that the ending is what completes the message of this masterpiece. Some fans like mister b were infuriated at this negative review, writing immature responses like “if you think the ending is a cop out, then you missed the point dickwads”. Jon A wrote in a comment to the review, “the ending wasn't just the cherry on top, it changed the flavour of the whole ice cream but in a good way. I think it makes the movie what it is. I don't understand how such a revelatory, creative climax can be called a cop out!!”. The most eloquent response came from Charlie T. who wrote, “Well...the ending actually shows us what the story was the whole time and it strengthens the theme with the ending. The story is about Edward Norton's character feeling emasculated in the modern world, so think of the ending in that context and it's actually brilliant that he imagines everything because it is a last mental strive to hold onto his male instincts.” He is one of the few readers who responded using evidence from the movie to try and justify the ending. The entire movie, the narrarator is striving to take control of his pitiful life and at the end by actually shooting himself he is able to do that. Judging by the fury and rage in some of these responses, I can tell that some of these fans do not just look at this movie as a story. They have read deeper into the movie and believe that Chuck Palahniuk's different ending from the book is meant to convey something about the narrarator and men in general. They certainly do not believe that the ending is a "cop out" but more so a work of genius. Another dispute that ensued on the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VaA6_CDRyY YouTube] page where Brad Pitt and Edward Norton discuss the meaning or shall I say meanings behind the film, is what the movie means to the viewer. In the comment section, [http://www.youtube.com/user/PasoFreak PasoFreak] comments, “Every American needs to see this movie. It's sort of a blueprint or looking glass into our future, if we end up rebelling”. MadPutz immediately commented back saying, “Fight Club actually shows how a misguided revolution would be destructive and fascist (the film purposely alludes to the Nazi's rise to power). The point is not to destroy the system, the﻿ point is to not let the system control you like Norton or make you a psycho like Pitt - the point is to not give a shit.” As lude and crazy as MadPutz's comments sound, I think what he says happens to be very intelligent. He is not saying to rebel like PasoFreak, rather he is saying that this movie shows us why we shouldn't rebel and let this consumerized world get into our heads. Norton even says this in the video when he says to the interviewer to make sure to draw a line between the film and the character. Norton means that destroying buildings at the end is not what his character wants, rather it is the only way for him to save himself. MadPutz realizes that this movie is very similar to the world we live in and that does not mean that we all should just start forming our own Project Mayhem groups and blowing up buildings to save our own lives. He wants us to realize that instead of driving ourselves mad over our society, just ignore it and live our own lives. Remediation The madness of ''Fight Club'' has invoked some crazy themes in its viewer’s minds that have translated to some really amazing fan art, fan poetry, and fan videos. One interesting example is called "A Copy of Copy of a Copy" by SwarlsBarkley (Cite). This picture is actually found in the opening credits of the movie but this artist decided to take it and draw his own twists on the image. He successfully nails the color down, even capturing the insomnia in the Narrators eyes. What I like about this in particular is the long face that he draws with the scruffy beard. It all shows how beat down and tired the narrator is of his life, through over exaggerating certain parts of his body. The crooked tie and awkward shirt give an also eerie feeling to the picture that I think goes really well with the movie. My favorite piece of fan art actually came from an artist by the name of [http://www.macdowellstudio.com/index.html Dave MacDowell] who uses acrylic art to blend two classic movies, Fight Club and The Breakfast Club into a picture called "The Breakfast Fight Club". This image first off is visually stunning simply with the use of all the bright, acrylic colors. Second, if you look really closely at the picture you start to pick up on various hidden images. In the background through the window you can see the fire from the building burning down at the end of the movie. Although the narrator is nameless throughout the movie, in the book he is named Jack and the artist makes good use of this throughout the picture. He has the narrator with a name tag that says Jack on it, and the person standing next to him has a shirt on that says “I am Jacks Brains!”. He also cleverly has Marla holding a basket that is labeled on it, “Hello, I am Jack’s basket case”. All of these little touches add up to an image that is clever, beautiful, and hilarious all at the same time. I appreciate how he can take such a serious movie and a funny movie, and combine them into an over the top picture that is just amusing to look at Besides these two interesting pieces of fan art, [http://fanfiction.net/ fan fiction.net ] offers some funny Haikus by a writer named [http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2131881/Devoted2You Devoted2You] who cleverly titled all of them “We are a little bit insane” (her favorite movie is Catfish). She has posted close to twenty different Haikus but one of them really stood out to me. This one is called Tyler: I needed to bleed I needed to fight someone I needed Tyler This very simple Haiku gave me a quick laugh because it gave this complex movie an uncomplicated twelve word saying. It represents everything that the Narrarator needed to "wake up" and lose his insomnia. He had never felt pain before, he had never stood up to anyone, and Tyler was exactly what he needed. Although, for such simple words it really sparked some interesting thoughts within my mind. What is intriging is that he is Tyler, so he never really needed Tyler in the first place. So it makes you question if he actually needed to bleed or fight someone in order to regain control of his life. There are always people who can take something serious and make the same situation hysetrical, and this is what a group called [http://www.hustlebot.com/ HustleBot] did to this classic scene. [http://youtube.com/ Youtube] offers many other remakes of certain scenes of the movie, but I found this one to be perfect and way better than the rest. To start, the scenery outside the bar looks almost identical to the one in the movie. The costumes worn by both Tyler and the Narrator are identical to the ones in the movie. The acting as well as the cuts of the camera are very similiar to the original scene as well. The only deviance from the movie that I can notice is that the script is slightly modified to say “Kiss Me” instead of “Hit me”. But, this is what makes this scene absolutely hilarious. In the end of this scene, instead of fighting like the movie, they just keep kissing. This got me thinking, what if Tyler Durden asked the Narrarator to kiss him instead of hit him? Although I can't say for sure whether there would actually be a fightclub started from it, would the Narrarator maybe come to his senses about life and wake up from his boring life? Similar to the way that a punch surely could have an impact on your consciousness, a kiss could do the same thing. The comments under the video were all postive, fans of the ''Fight Club'' were saying things like, "mischief﻿ mayhem lipstick" adding their own comedic spin on the movie. It is nice to see that people can take a serious film and create some down right hilarious videos about it. Fight Club Fanatics (Cult Movement) Not only did ''Fight Club ''establish a cult within the movie called Project Mayhem, but they have inspired cults all over the world trying to accomplish some of the same things. Just this past year in a Washington middle school, officials discovered a year long “fight club” that was taking place. Every Friday, close to thirty students would join in via text message to hear the new location of the club and would meet there at the designated time. They had the same rules as the normal fight club, except this fight club was not going down in the basement of a bar, it was happening on the school grounds. Ultimately this was discovered when one student broke the first rule of fight club, do not talk about fight club, and the school caught on to the kids. These students claim they would do it to imiatate the movie and to gain respect within their friends. (analyze more) The infamous yin and yang table that was in the movie was recently sold for close to six thousand dollars (cite). This was the only table left after the other two were broken while filming violent scenes in the movie. This just shows the types of fanatic fans that the movie has. (analyze) The movies director Chuck Palahniuk's (hyperlink) recently received an email from a Ukranian group called the UA Resistance. They have been peacefully protesting the increasing cost of housing in Ukrain along with the corruption that goes along with it. In the email was an interview a local news station had with a member of the resistance explaining their most recent protest. The cleverly took one of the iconic symbols from the movie (the smiley face) and put it to use in one of the major apartment buildings in Ukraine. The simple protest actually got a huge amount of attention for its success and non-violent approach. (analyze) Besides this real world use of the movies message and tactics, there have been tons of cult-like fans trying to imitate the movie. Just like the work from this group of fans, there have been both short collages of some of the best scenes from the movie as well as countless reenactments of scenes all over YouTube. This one titled, “60 Second Fight Club” was entered into a festival for 60 second clips and is one of the best YouTube videos I have ever seen. (analyze) Links and Resources